First of all, I picked Texas A&M to beat Miami last night. I was dead wrong, horribly horribly wrong. I was so wrong, the limit of my wrongness approaches negative infinity as x approaches from the left- ah crap, this isn’t calculus. 0-1.
South Carolina vs. LSU – The “other” USC jumped into the top 25 after beating Georgia on the road and then continued building momentum after beating South Carolina State pretty good last weekend, but don’t look for that to continue here. Even without WR Early Doucet LSU’s offense isn’t going to have much trouble putting points on the board, and their defense will keep South Carolina’s offense in check just enough to maintain control of the game. This may be a low-scoring affair, but LSU comes out on top.
Penn State vs. Michigan – Michigan has a little bit of a problem here. Chad Henne isn’t likely to play tomorrow, leaving a freshman who completed less than 50% of his passes against Notre Shame last weekend. That sucks for Michigan, since Penn State’s pass defense is 47th in the nation now. But at least they can make Mike Hart shoulder the load, right? Wrong, because Penn State’s rush defense is 1st in the nation. Something’s going to give tomorrow, and while I think Michigan is a little more confident in knowing that they are capable of winning games, I don’t think they are going to be able to do enough to beat Penn State.
Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State – What Troy did to Oklahoma State last weekend is going to happen about 3 times over at the hands of Texas Tech. Write it down, Texas Tech wins by at least a couple touchdowns.
Ball State vs. Nebraska – Nebraska ran several practices in full pads this week after not having done so since fall camp. Bill Callahan’s reasoning: plenty of NFL teams practice in helmets and shells during the week. Upon hearing this, the Omaha World-Herald promptly called up 13 “nationally prominent” college programs to ask about this, and all 13 responded saying they run drills in full pads at least once a week. Hopefully that results in better tackling from Nebraska’s defense. Nebraska will win fairly easily, but it won’t be the laugher that Nevada was.
A few more that I’m too lazy to write anything about:
Alabama over Georgia
Michigan State over Notre Dame
Colorado over Miami (OH)